The Free Economic Society, created under Catherine II, was fully in line with the enlightenment intentions of the Empress and her desire to encourage landowners to arrange their estates based on knowledge. One of the factors of its establishment was the need to accelerate the colonization of the Ukrainian southern territories, where land was received by officials and officers without economic skills. The society was to promote the foreign experience and the experience of those landowners who had achieved certain successes in growing high yields, organizing work, using machines and tillage, and building outbuildings. At the same time, it sought to study local specifics by describing and accumulating information about the demographic situation and economic potential of all territories of the Russian Empire. How did the landowners of the Ukrainian lands react to the attempts of the VET to involve them in their own activities and did its recommendations for the introduction of new agricultural technologies, which were discussed in the company’s publications, become authoritative? The author’s observations of the initial period of his activity allowed us to draw the following conclusions. In order to attract enlightened businessmen to participate in the society, the supreme power mobilized the local administration, which in turn mobilized the nobility. However, landowners were in no hurry to share their own achievements, and the company’s printed works did not become widespread and respectively did not take advantage of VET recommendations. There were insignificant successes in the natural-economic and demographic description of the provinces. The most complete were the descriptions of the Sloboda-Ukrainian province, the rest either did not take part in this project at all, or were brief.
A demographic description of the recovery of the Vulnerable Spanish imperial eagle Aquila adalberti
